Police departments in big cities, small cities and even little towns are seeing record numbers of cops quitting or retiring.
Here in Oakland, of course, OPD should have at least 792 officers. But last time I checked, the number was below 700. Then there’s Chicago, where between January and July of this year, 400 officers bailed. “Law enforcement and being a police officer have come under attack,” explains a Windy City lawmaker.
New York City’s police department is seeing “its lowest level in ten years,” as thousands of officers have left since 2020. The attrition extends across the nation: Salt Lake City down 135 cops. Minneapolis down 200. Atlanta down 400. Baltimore down 500. Los Angeles down 631. Denver down 200, of a force of 1,500. “We’re holding things together with duct tape and chewing gum,” says Denver’s Police Chief.
Small cities and towns too are seeing cops bail. The entire police department of Kimberling MO (population 2,665) quit. In Asheville NC, 80 officers have left, of a force of only 238. One officer explained, “I’m drowning in this politically charged atmosphere of hate and destruction.” Atascosa County, Texas (population 51,153) has barely enough cops to cover their territory. “We’ve lost that one thing in law enforcement that we had going for us, and that was the character, honor, and service that officers felt that they were bringing to do that job into their lives," said the head of Texas’s most powerful police advocacy group.
The Police Executive Research Forum, a national police policy and research group, polled nearly 200 American police departments. “Increases in resignations were… significant,” they found, with an 18% increase in the quit rate in 2020-21, compared to 2019-20. At the same time, PERF reports, “Increases in retirements were even larger.” They tracked a 45% increase in the retirement rate.
The reasons for this can be summed up in this remark by L.A.’s police chief: “[Cops] are worn out. They’re frustrated. They’re tired. They’re feeling fatigued, and they’re looking for options outside the profession.” Says Asheville’s police chief, “With the way that police have been portrayed and vilified…they have decided it’s not the life for them.” The head of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund puts it bluntly: “The issue of people leaving the profession has to do with morale. They feel it’s no longer a profession they’re willing to risk their lives and limbs for. They don’t feel their work is for a good reason. They don’t feel appreciated by the public. So they just find other things to do.”
Who can blame them? Day after day, they hear anti-cop crap from the likes of Cat Brooks. They have to listen to out-of-touch, disconnected City Council bureaucrats lecture them. They suffer the indignity of seeing a newspaper like the San Francisco Chronicle give Brooks every opportunity to propagandize—without offering equal space to cop supporters.
I wish that everyone could have attended the OPD training session I went to yesterday, where a dozen cops used virtual reality to study their responses to sudden violence. What I saw were brave, friendly, good-natured professionals who willingly enter situations of the gravest peril, in order to protect and serve us. If Oakland descends into criminal anarchy, as it seems to be doing, historians will blame its politicians—yes, Nikki Bas, Carroll Fife, Rebecca Kaplan and the others--for caving in to the likes of Ms. Brooks. They will have blood on their hands, and the destruction of a city they led down the garden path to oblivion.
Steve Heimoff